Do Labour leaders always have a working-class enforcer?

The passing of John Prescott has attracted an impressive amount of attention, and affection, about his time in politics and, in particular, the contribution he made to New Labour and the Blair administration in which he played such an important part.

With very different backgrounds and outlooks, Prescott as deputy leader and Tony Blair as the boss made their partnership work, and was rarely equalled before or since...

Obviously, in his personal style, he was like nothing before or since. As a “type”, however, he fitted the notion of a socially and/or politically “balanced ticket” between a leader and their deputy that Labour has resorted to quite often. The stereotype would be posher, north London-based, “intellectual” in the top job, with a more authentically working class deputy, usually to their left, sometimes questioning but fundamentally loyal.

Yes. Until his time later in life at Ruskin College, Oxford, Prescott, like Rayner, didn’t go university; they both worked their way up in the Labour movement through the trade unions; both are Northern, with appropriate accents; both attracted the scorn of less intelligent people who consider themselves their social betters. Both are essential to their leaders, in terms of being a “bridge” with the past, to the unions and the left. Though Keir Starmer served under Jeremy Corbyn, it was Rayner’s rapid promotion in that era that made her career so successful in such a short time. But it was also her willingness to compromise with the right and move past the Corbyn/Momentum era that allowed her to overtake her friend, flatmate and fellow Corbyn protegee Rebecca Long-Bailey, a now sadly forgotten figure. Like Prescott, Rayner knew how to give way.

That said, neither Rayner nor Prescott were made shadow chancellor and were generally kept away from the main thrust of economic policy. Both made do with voluminous but more marginal briefs in areas such as the regions, what we now call “levelling up”, housing or transport. It’s fair to say Prescott’s powerbase in office shrank over time, for various reasons. (One footnote in history is that Prescott’s grand plan for regional assemblies was killed off when he lost the 2004 referendum for one in the northeast of England. The No campaign was masterminded by Dominic Cummings, in what turned out to be a dry run for the EU vote in 2016).

Rayner’s prospects look better, especially if she ever achieves those ambitious housebuilding targets.

He shouldn’t neglect his deputy because, despite his parliamentary landslide, his popular mandate – share of the vote – is fragile, and far more so than Blair’s. In other words, as the “tough choices” are made and his ratings slide, he will need “Ange” far more than Blair ever needed John to bolster his personal position.

Thus far she has been extremely loyal over, for example, cuts to the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance and, broadly, the Budget – but she has let it be known that she also signed up to the joint letter objecting to spending cuts sent to Starmer, by Louise Haigh (transport), Shabana Mahmood (justice), Steve Reed (environment) and Bridget Phillipson (education). Starmer does seem closer to Rachel Reeves than Rayner, but at the moment it’s Reeves who’s causing the government all the pain of unpopularity and coming under sustained bombardment. Ange just gets to crack the gags at hapless Tories at deputy PMQs.

Not necessarily, but it helps. The Blair-Prescott “ticket” was electorally highly successful because, as Blair admits, “Heineken” Prescott could reach parts of the party and the electorate that he probably couldn’t. Back in the early 1960s, Hugh Gaitskell, Hampstead intellectual and public schoolboy, had George Brown, ex-fur salesman and trade union official from Southwark, to be his populist talisman, though also on Labour’s right. Though a far less harmonious relationship, with some serious treachery, there was at least a similar complementarity in class terms between Clement Attlee (Haileybury and Oxford) and Herbert Morrison (left school at 14), albeit Attlee was probably the more “socialist”.

One thing a leader knows is that, unlike the Conservatives, they constitutionally have to have a deputy and, being elected by the MPs and later the membership separately, the deputy leader has a mandate in their own right. So they cannot be sacked. They usually stand down when their leader goes, as was the case when Prescott retired with Blair, as Roy Hattersley did when Neil Kinnock stood down in 1992, and the Michael Foot-Denis Healey partnership ended in 1983. Margaret Beckett in 1994 and Morrison in 1955 both tied and failed to move up to the leader’s office.

However, Rayner may be encouraged by the two deputy leaders who directly succeeded their bosses when their moment came – Foot taking over from Jim Callaghan in 1980, and Attlee from George Lansbury back in 1935. It’s not necessarily a dead end. Labour has still not had a female leader, let alone a female prime minister...